Tweeted

So this is a little weird.

I have been dropping hints in this blog about the climate change consultations that were impending and are now fully upon me. We did two sessions in Toronto this past Tuesday and Wednesday. This week coming up, I'm in Thunder Bay and Sudbury. The week after that, Ottawa and Kingston. The week after that Guelph and Kitchener-Waterloo. 

Despite the fact that we are in the age of social media and instantaneous transmission of important information like who wore what at the Oscars and what's on LOL cats, the Ministry's approach to the consultation is to physically ship as many as a dozen sixty-five kilogram humans to each location and engage in old-fashioned face to face conversations. 

But that doesn't mean the Ministry is not up to date. Not long before someone took the above photo of me and put it into the Twittersphere, I asked the audience to do two things: turn their phone ringers off and please tweet. 

The communications people at the Ministry are very happy when people tweet about what the Ministry is doing.

I've got mixed feelings about being the thing tweeted. Readers know that I only infrequently put pictures of people on this blog, and even less frequently than that, pictures of me. So, even though I throw my thoughts every week into the gaping abyss that is the Internet, I still try to maintain a modicum of control (warmly reassured by the fact that, of the world's seven billion plus souls, only about twenty of 'em check out this blog every week). 

When the Communications Branch social media maven came to me and said, "you're on Twitter," all I said was, "that's nice."

Then he said, "we've had seven million hits on that site since we started."    

Then I wish I'd combed my hair.

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Pop Quiz Answer: the out-of-place-seeming MARSEC threat level board can be found in several places on the property of the Redpath Sugar facility on the Toronto Waterfront. Why that may be is beyond me.

Thanks to the two people who hazarded a guess. It was nice to get replies to the blog.

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Proof I'm Getting Old: I felt deeply sad when I learned that Leonard Nimoy had died.  

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Strangest Thing I Saw This Week: Rob Ford posing with the stupid stuff he's selling on E-bay, including his "yes, I have smoked crack" NFL tie. 


Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Today's Lesson / Pop Quiz

Several times this week I found myself asking people why everything was being done at the very last minute. The response, always, to this question was a warm, pitying look, and words to the effect of "it's how we do things around here."   

For today's post, I will apply this general law of the universe to teach you something and then test your knowledge at the same time.

It's how I do things around here.

So, MARSEC, what is it and what is it for. 

The following passage is cut and pasted directly from Wikipedia:

MARSEC (MARitime SECurity) is the three-tiered United States Coast Guard Maritime Security system designed to easily communicate to the Coast Guard and the maritime industry pre-planned scalable responses for credible threats. Its objective is to provide an assessment of possible terrorist activity within the maritime sectors of transportation, including threats to nautical facilities and vessels falling within the jurisdiction of the United States that could be targets of attack.The Coast Guard originally created MARSEC to be compatible with, and respond in unison to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS). With the introduction of the National Terrorism Advisory System(NTAS) to replace HSAS, the Commandant of the Coast Guard will adjust the MARSEC Level, if appropriate, based on any NTAS Alert issued by DHS.

Now that you've learned what MARSEC is, here's your test.

I recently took this photo of a MARSEC threat level board somewhere on the Toronto waterfront, which, to the best of my knowledge, falls neither under the jurisdiction of the US Coast Guard nor the United States.

Did I take the photo ...

1. On Hanlan's Point, by the air quality monitoring station put there to support the Pan Am Games?
2. By the Billy Bishop Airport on Toronto Island?
3. By the Redpath Sugar plant, next to Sugar Beach?
4. By the Island Ferry Dock?

I'll provide the answer next week, but if you'd like to guess, please do so in the comments box below.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Genteel Ruin

Abandoned home, St. Augustine Florida, March 2014

About a year ago, Bruce and I visited friends who have a condo in St. Augustine, Florida. We walked a lot in that pretty, historic, city, and twice found ourselves in Lincolnville.

In case you can't read it, the plaque says that Lincolnville began as a settlement of emancipated slaves in 1866, on the site of First Nations' villages. The fifty-block neighbourhood contains the largest concentration of late victorian homes in St. Augustine (also known as the Ancient City).

There were many well-tended and pretty properties in Lincolnville, but my eye lingered on the ones teetering on the brink of or well into genteel ruin.

And the ones imaginatively repurposed, like the Lincolnville Public Library below.

In case you can't read it in the picture, the phrase under Fresh Produce" is "locally grown." The locavores have found St. Augustine.

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Some weeks, I really don't know what I'm going to write about in this blog. I sift through the eleven thousand shots I have in iPhoto and wait 'til something grabs me. 

These photos of old buildings slowly losing the fight against entropy appealed to me this week because I know we won't be able to see our friends in St. Augustine this year and I miss them.

The photos also make me think of the state I'll be in after the Ontario government's whirlwind, first phase, public consultation on climate change.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Quicksand Survival

Garbage-picking raven, with admirer (see lower right corner of the shot), Beacon Hill Park, Victoria, July 2014

Things at the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Crazy have been picking up torque. There's lots going on and, for every person tasked with actually getting things done, there are at least a half a dozen more with an opinion (almost always helpful) about how that should happen.

There are documents, consultation plans, announcements, media plans, issue management plans, reactions to things the Premier said, things the Minister said, things the opposition said ... all running with the orderly progression of stampeding ducks.

People are, understandably, showing some signs of stress. Since I've been back from Niagara on the Lake, I have witnessed myself or heard of second hand, weeping, yelling, displays of anger and panic. 

For example:

My phone rang late Monday afternoon. My otherwise pretty calm boss was angry with me because of something he had been yelled at about. 

My freshly-minted other boss (it's a long story) was in my office the next day, also late in the afternoon, also angry with me because of something he had been yelled at about.

They were upset because they thought my branch was responsible for avoidable delays. My team was vindicated, of course, when further delays for which we were still clearly not the cause kept the items at issue from their deadline.

When I am in situations like this, I recall the TV westerns I spent hundreds of hours watching when I was a kid. The schoolrooms of Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, Rifleman, Bonanza and, to a lesser extent, F-Troop, taught me that you can survive a rattlesnake bite, go for five days without food, three days without water, and, if you find yourself in quicksand, don't struggle.  

My advice to my staff is "fighting it just makes it worse." 

I'm not sure the message has sunk in.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen